I Became a Genius Engineer That Mega Corporations Are Obsessed With - Chapter 35

WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Became a Genius Engineer That Mega Corporations Are Obsessed With ◈

Chapter 35

──────

Zino

And so we wrapped up our shopping in Socket 11 and made it back to our nest, Titan Garage.

"Phew. You've had a really rough day, Rita."

"Seriously... I'm not usually this timid, but next to you, boss, I feel like a total coward."

The moment the garage door locked with a click, Rita threw off her coat, let out a long sigh, and kept going.

"How could you ask for extra investment right then? Do you have no fear at all?"

"I had my own calculations and conviction behind it. It worked out in the end, didn't it?"

In the end, Patron Rayden had put another 3 million credits into me.

The terms were simple.

Pay it back as 6 million credits within a year.

He didn't care how I paid it. No monthly installments, no progress reports along the way. All I had to do was show up on the date with 6 million.

He took no collateral. Not that I had anything to put up in the first place.

In exchange, he did tack on one small condition: if I ever needed to sell something I'd made, he wanted me to run it through him.

It was an interest rate absurd enough to slap a loan shark on both cheeks, roll a full circle, and hit them once more, but in the end I was the one who'd picked "accept" over "decline."

Setting the amount aside, there was value in earning the Patron's recognition and putting the money he'd lent to work. If I could take it, taking it wasn't a bad idea.

And... well, I was confident I could pay it back.

'I'll help your goods earn the value they deserve.'

Those were reassuring words. He seemed to be the most generous and good-natured of all the bigshots I'd met so far, too.

But the more so, the less I could afford to trust him completely. The people like that were the ones you could never tell what was going on inside.

The need to be wary of bigshots hadn't gone anywhere.

From here on, I had to keep my head even clearer and walk the tightrope between them well.

With the credits borrowed from the Patron, I'd managed to buy a heart core drive.

A decent one, picked out by the Patron to match the price.

What I'd gotten from him was Arcana Tech's Silver Aether Grail Mk-1.

A low-tier model, and an older one at that, but its performance was good for such a simple structure, and it was sturdy, which suited me.

And honestly, getting something this good for 3 million credits was close to a miracle. Anything made by Arcana was practically top-shelf.

My original goal had been to buy a small-company core drive for about 500,000 credits and modify it into an upgrade, so by that measure this was a tremendous haul.

...Of course, I'd have to pay it back as 6 million credits in a year.

Well... I believe that the future me, upgraded by what I did today, would pay back the 6 million someday.

"Are you starting work already?"

Rita asked.

"Yeah. Well. No reservations coming in for a while, and the faster it's done, the better."

"Can I watch you work from beside you?"

"Yeah. Sure."

First, I pushed the case with the Grail to one side of the workbench.

Then ZINO-03 came out onto the bench.

"It's an android core. So... you said there's a self in there, right?"

"Yeah. It's faint right now, but there's room for them to grow into something human, or even beyond."

"Hmm... can something like that really happen?"

In this world, Rita's reaction was the right one. The AIs of ordinary androids, like the ones I'd seen at Dolores Taxi, mostly ran on programmed algorithms and commands rather than any sense of self.

"Phew. Let's get started."

"But we don't have an android body at the garage, do we? Are you going to build that yourself too?"

...Rita had a point. An android core really did need an android body to run properly.

But unfortunately our garage was poor, and we still couldn't afford to build a body.

Well... with my skills, I could rig up something body-like out of scrap, but with the garage's current equipment, a proper body was hard to manage.

At best, it would end up a creaky tin-can robot.

"Building a body is too much for now, so I'm just going to attach the parts it absolutely needs."

"The parts it absolutely needs?"

"Yeah."

I started digging through the pile of parts Serena had left behind.

What I was after: a speaker for output, a camera and a data sensor, and a microphone for input.

One by one, I calmly hooked them up around the core.

"Okay, that covers the basics. Eyes, ears, mouth, and even a nose."

"So does it work now?"

"Once it has power."

I connected my own mana battery to the core.

I had to check whether it would run at all.

The instant the battery clicked into ZINO-03's main interface-

Whirr... Click.

The camera lens on the core slid back and forth with a faint buzz, as if focusing.

Rita, who'd been watching beside me with bated breath, went wide-eyed.

"Oh. It's moving! Boss, the camera lit up!"

"Yeah. At least it runs normally."

My heart was pounding for some reason. In the game, ZINO-03 had been a pretty unusual boss.

For one, the boss was among the longest-lived, so a lot of the backstory in the plot came out of conversations with Zino.

Androids who developed selves over time had gathered, one by one, around Zino, who was said to be the first to awaken a personality. That was how the androids' district came to be.

Being the androids' district didn't mean they shunned or fought other humans or mutants. But it was also a belligerent faction that waged endless war against any force known to be hostile to androids.

So if your standing with the other factions hostile to androids got too high before you befriended Zino, you ended up Zino's enemy.

And since most of those other factions were so game-friendly they were practically required for progression, players who went in without knowing about Zino often ended up killed by Zino.

That was how cruel, terrifying, and merciless the boss was.

And now that boss-class entity was opening their eyes in front of me.

So... what would they say to me?

Whirr... Whirr... Zino's camera swept over Rita and me, and at last a sound came out of the speaker.

"Who are you, big bro and sis? Where is this?"

...? What?

"I have to apologize to Grandpa Nick... Can you tell him I'm really sorry I couldn't pass on the news about the funeral? I thought Grandpa Nick would be so sad if I told him. Oh. No. I was taught you have to apologize to Grandpa Nick yourself. I'll do it. Oh. I want to move, but I don't have a body right now."

Watching that, all I could do was slap my own forehead.

The Zino of 300 years ago wasn't a boss-class entity. Zino was still a little kid.

"What the hell..."

I was still struggling to pull myself together when-

"Hm. Hello. My name's Rita. Could you tell us your name?"

Rita stepped in and started talking to Zino in my place.

"Oh. My name's Zino. Sera called me Amy, but I felt like Zino was my real name. I wonder how Sera is doing now... Sera's dad was a really bad person who hit Sera every day... I'm worried Sera's hurting."

Rita's expression froze, her mouth opening slightly and then closing.

I wasn't doing much better at keeping my face straight.

After a moment of that, Rita poked me and started whispering in my ear.

"Boss. You're the owner now, so anyway, you need to introduce yourself quickly."

Now that she said it, she was right. With so many things happening so suddenly, I'd lost track.

I thought it over for a moment. How should I talk to leave a good impression on Zino?

They might be just an android, but somehow what lay inside seemed like nothing more than a young child.

With so little experience dealing with kids, I broke into a sweat.

"Hi, Zino. I'm Dex, and starting today I'll be living with you."

"Oh..."

Zino's aperture closed completely, just like a person closing their eyes.

"Grandpa Nick must have been disappointed in me and sent me back in the end. I did it because I didn't want Grandpa Nick to be sad, but I made Grandpa Nick sad anyway."

The voice coming through the speaker was pitiful. A voice that sounded like it truly felt sorrow.

An AI with a self was a good thing, but that self was still at the level of a small child?

I couldn't believe that an AI this fragile would grow into a boss-class entity that started wars on that scale in the distant future.

"They said I was a broken android. That I couldn't even do something that simple right, that I was a ruined android. Sniff..."

And then Zino started crying, though there were no tears to shed.

"Uh... B-boss! Do something!"

Rita, flustered as well, looked at me.

"Zino. I'm an engineer."

"...What's an engineer?"

"Someone who repairs or builds machines. My real specialty is prosthetics, but I can still check whether you're really broken or not. Want to try?"

"...Okay."

Zino, after sniffling for a good while, said that.

"But, does it hurt?"

"It doesn't hurt. Don't worry. I'm just checking whether anything hurts."

"...Okay."

I quietly used [Spellbreaker's Magic Eye] to look inside.

'Ugh.'

A magical protection was in place, and the recoil threw me back immediately. It seemed to be a fairly powerful safeguard.

That didn't mean I was out of options, though.

There was a sort of trick: combining [Prohibition Command] with mana thread could let me see inside.

But I felt instinctively that I shouldn't use that method. I couldn't force my way into Zino, who still felt like a child.

Which meant I'd have to ask Zino to lift the recoil barrier directly...

Instead of choosing that, I decided to say this.

"The check just finished. Zino."

"Huh? Am I really broken? Can I be fixed?"

"No. You're not broken. You're fine. You're just still learning. Because you're a kid. Kids all learn slowly like that. I think you only made mistakes because there are things you haven't learned yet. Mr. Nick will probably forgive you for your mistakes someday."

"Do you really think so?"

"Yeah. He'll forgive you. In the meantime, could you stay with me?"

"...Yeah. I'll do my best. Big bro Dex."

Hearing that, I scratched my head. What I'd wanted was the bloodless, tearless boss-class bigshot I'd seen in Fupunkalypse, but...

A friend like this wouldn't be so bad either.

Knowing what Zino looked like in the game, I even found it a little cute.

It felt like flipping through the elementary school graduation album of someone I'd always felt close to.

"Okay, then, Zino. Can you help me out from here on?"

Because now I had to build the real mana core drive.

Right then, Rita came up beside me, grinning.

"You're talented with kids. Have you ever had one?"

"What kind of nonsense is that? I'm barely twenty and not even married."